Building Trust at Work: Three Essential Components

As you assess your work environment, do you regard it as a place of high or low trust?  Why?  Chances are you see lots of evidence of low trust:  between employees and their supervisors, between peers, between the CEO and stakeholders, between the CEO and the Board, between you and your boss.  Chances are there’s room for improvement on many levels in many ways.  Chances are you aren’t as happy as you could be because trust was never formed in the first place or trust was broken somewhere along the line.

You can have a collection of intelligent, creative, and visionary people working together on a project, and if they don’t really trust that each person is going to do his share by the established deadline, there’s a big problem.  That problem is like an elephant in the living room, and, unless it’s resolved, the project may not get done when it has to be done.  Further, the individuals involved live with a simmering fear of the others that covertly poisons the process and possibly the outcome.

So what do you need to do to earn the trust of the folks around you?  First, you must demonstrate competence on the job.  Competence refers to a solid, well-rounded skill set that is appropriate for your position within the company.  Competence does not mean that you have to know everything twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  But competence does imply a certain degree of resourcefulness so that you know who to approach for the information you lack.  Staff, Board, peers, and stakeholders need to perceive you as a competent professional.  A competent leader/manager helps people to feel secure as they go about their own job responsibilities.  Your competence—or lack of it—is generally mirrored by the folks who work for you and the folks around you.  It is unlikely that you are highly competent but your employees and peers are noticeably incompetent.  While there are always individual exceptions, know that your degree of competence constantly winks back at you through others.  Make a point to observe this for a week.  What do you see?  Do you like what you see?  What changes do you need to make in order to get a different reflection?

 Second, you must be a person of integrity.  People have to see you as someone who does what she says she will do unless there’s a very good reason.  They have to see you as honest, even willing to admit making mistakes.  They have to see you as a person who walks the talk alongside of them.  They need to know you are real.  Phonies lack integrity.  Phonies pretend to be people they aren’t.  Leaders/managers with integrity say what they mean and mean what they say, and, while they may alter the presentation, they don’t change the message content to appease different audiences.  They care about what is right and what is wrong, refusing to water down truth.  If you have integrity, you know what your personal values are and you consciously choose to live by them on a daily basis.  Your integrity breaks down in the eyes of others when they see you implementing a set of values that differs from the set you profess to be your truth.  Want to adulterate your current position at work?  Perhaps your entire career?  Want to destroy everything you’ve worked for?  Probably not.  Exhibiting integrity that shines is a huge key to your lifelong success.  When people don’t perceive you as an individual of integrity, they simply won’t trust you.  To a large degree your professional success depends upon how much people trust you.

Third, you must demonstrate genuine benevolence.  A lot of managers/leaders underestimate or ignore this component.  Competence isn’t enough.  Integrity isn’t enough.  You’ve got to have this third piece in your visible professional picture or people won’t trust you.  I’ve known several top executives who eventually lost their jobs because they lacked benevolence.  You need to show benevolence in ways peers and staff understand.  In other words, it can’t be your brand of benevolence.  It has to be benevolence that means something to others.  Let’s be clear:  benevolence isn’t letting people off the hook when they are doing inappropriate things in the workplace.  It isn’t forgiving missed deadlines time and time again.  It isn’t turning your head when you know an employee has a substance abuse problem that impacts his performance.  True benevolence is a type of charity, an expression of kindness that responds to situations like somebody’s mother’s sudden death, somebody’s diagnosis of a serious disease, somebody’s string of sleepless nights.  It may take the form of spending fifteen minutes with the person or sending flowers or writing a little note.  Showing benevolence is not rocket science.  Often it’s common sense that comes naturally when you learn of another’s loss, struggle, or pain.

Many management problems stem from the fact that one or more of these components are missing.  Highly competent people won’t make it in management positions long term if they lack integrity or benevolence or both.  Technical skill can’t save you.  If you’ve only got technical skill you’re like an empty shell.  On the other hand, if you’ve got stellar integrity and plenty of appropriate benevolence but little competence, you can’t last.  Individuals in management/leadership positions absolutely have to be competent.  You can’t increase competence in employees if you are incompetent.  You won’t succeed in getting them to trust you if they view you as lacking in this area.  Whatever you demonstrate comes back to you.  So be mindful about what you are putting out there for the world to see.  All of it matters far more than you may realize.

One additional but critical thought:  people who are short on personal integrity have a serious problem.  You can’t just decide one day that at 10:00 AM you’ll acquire integrity.  Why?  Because integrity or lack of it is at the core of who we are.  We don’t change our core overnight.  We CAN change it, but the change occurs very slowly over time.  If others have experienced us for twenty years as persons who lack integrity, changing that perception is going to be tough if not impossible.  Since this is true, we must be people of integrity early in our careers.  Competence can be learned and developed.  Benevolence can be learned with practice.  Integrity, however, is who we are inside from the time we are young.  In general, managers/leaders without integrity or without enough integrity fail.  This is a fact of life. 

Where do YOU see yourself regarding these three components of trust?  Are you missing something?  If so, which one?  What can you do today to narrow that gap?  The truth is that, until you fill the gap, your life at work will be harder than it needs to be and less fulfilling that it should be.  Your work culture suffers; individuals suffer.  Make a commitment to become WHOLE, and watch your environment bloom.